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TJAC World
2024/Project/Bradford and Bolton

A Flag Large Enough

In partnership with KaskoSan

16 May 1944. Romani inmates rise up against the Nazi SS at Auschwitz-Birkenau, saving the lives of more than 6,000 inmates.
16 May 2024. Four diverse Roma groups from Bradford and Bolton come together to share this history at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford.

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A Flag Large Enough is a community project co-created and delivered with KaskoSan, an organisation working with Roma people with heritage in Central and Eastern Europe since 2009.

KaskoSan, a registered charity founded and run by East European Roma, supports more than a thousand Romani families, face-to-face in the north, and reaches 10 million Romani speakers online.

For this project, members of Romani communities, originally from Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, living in Bradford, Bolton and Oldham come together for the first time to share music, dance, theatre and food, and celebrate their culture. Four diverse groups meet for the first time and take part in workshops to celebrate International Roma Day and to devise a new performance.

On 16 May 1944, there was an uprising against the Nazi SS by Romani prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which saved the lives of more than 6,000 inmates.

Eighty years later, on 16 May 2024, these participant groups performed A Flag Large Enough at Theatre in the Mill in Bradford, co-created with the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Sharing music, dance and personal stories from the Roma communities to mark Roma Resistance Day.

A Flag Large Enough is about this history and how Roma people organise and resist today. It explores contemporary Romani culture, community and solidarity; how an oppressed people carve out their own space. It questions what it means to be “a people”, how it empowers and how it silences, and how we make a flag large enough to enfold everyone.

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The team

Co-writersJavaad Alipoor and James Varney
Co-creatorsJuice Vamosi, Maria Palmai, Michael Szileczki, Priscilla Vamosi and Viktoria Kalanyos
DirectorJavaad Alipoor
PerformersJuice Vamosi, Maria Palmai, Michael Szileczki, Priscilla Vamosi, and Viktoria Kalanyos with support from Alex Torok, Diego Horvath, Jozef Torok, Kevin Torok, Ramona Torok and Santino Horvath
DancersJozsef Horvath, Michael Szileczki, Richard Szileczki, Samu Horvath, Sharon Horvath, Tiffany Horvath, and Viktoria Kalanyos
MusicFlorin & Cristina Bolmandir and Lacko Band
Lighting and AVTate Creations
DramaturgJames Varney
Stage ManagementDaryl Blair

Partners

This project was made possible with the support of The Bertha Foundation, Theatre in the Mill and Bolton Socialist Club.

Awards

2024Shortlisted for The Stage Community Award
Image credit: Georgiana Ghetiu